the obama administration has extended the life of the international space station by four years until 2024. the cost here, $3 billion a year. what it means, the $100 million space station won t come splashing down into the pacific ocean in 2020 as has been planned. joining me now, jay barberie. it took 13 years to build, but by 2024, will the technology still be effective given that the united states is saying we re going to put in the money? yeah, it will be. but again, on the other hand, what they re doing up there, the experiments they can be while in earth s orbit. the biggest problem is they re stuck in earth orbit. we ve been stuck in earth orbit since 1972. what the space family would like to see happen is going back to space aircraft that can fly
in just about four hours, space shuttle discovery is scheduled to blast off on its last flight. nasa began fueling the shuttle just after sunrise this morning. and the weather outlook has improved to a 90% go for liftoff at 4:50 eastern time. nbc s jay barberie is live at cape canaveral, florida. i mean, this kind of well, this is a bittersweet moment, isn t it for you, jay, to have covered the discovery shuttle lifting off so many times. i mean, this was the shuttle that was first back into space after both of those major tragedies, columbia and the challenger, an incredible day. reporter: it s the workhorse, that s right, contessa. as you said, discovery has been called on to do about everything, and now it s scheduled to do its last flight. that s 39 flights if it goes off
obvious. right. so nasa, jay barberie s listening. he s waiting for a decision here, folks. thank you, jay. good to see you. and we re watching for that shuttle liftoff again here this afternoon. you ll see it here on msnbc. i m contessa brewer, thank you for watching. i ll see you back here tomorrow at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m. out west. up next, andrea mitchell reports. andrea, hi? hi, contessa, thanks. we ll have the latest on breaking developments in texas, where a saudi college student has been arrested on terror charges. plus, general petraeus investigating reports that a top general in afghanistan used psy-ops to influence senators visiting the war zone. and who is the most conservative member of congress? some surprises. and brewed the coffee. we heated the bathwater and gave kelly a cleaner ride to school. cooked the cube steaks and steamed the veggies. entertained dad, and mom, and a neighbor or two. kept watch on the house when they slept. and tomorrow we could do ev
it uses an upper stage aryan five, which launches from french guyna, andaryian 5, the french rocket, the european added to it, they can put into space any spacecraft that s being built and it s a commercial approach. it costs $400 million plus to put the shuttle up there, contessa, they can do it for $180 million. but is nasa disappointed about this? jay, when you re talking to nasa folks? yeah. well, i don t know if they are or not. because this just came out. now, the facilities are already built here. they have already flown this twice. it works perfectly. it has the record of history. and they re sitting there saying, what is a no-brainer, like, are we going to fly something else or look at this or what are we going to do? i think what we re going to do here, contessa is say, let s see what happens. i want to see what they can come up with to say, why we shouldn t fly this, because it s so
what is important is nobody was hurt here. jay barberie, thanks. a new weapon enlisted in a battle against the oil. an oil-drinking whale. it is a boat. it is the largest oil skimming vessel in the world, dubbed the whale. at 3 1/2 football fields long and ten stories high, it is set to suck up 21 million gallons of oiled water a day. charles hadlock is in venice, louisiana, for us. good afternoon to you. reporter: the administration and bp and the coast guard have been criticized for turning down offers of help from foreign vessels. this is hard to miss, though. ten stories high, three and a half football fields long, the whale will move out to the drill site and will begin to skim up a five-mile by five-mile area. they ll test it to see how well it works. it is a unique project.